In 1965, Jim McKay was a 19-year-old country boy who transplanted from a small swamp town in Louisiana to Los Angeles. He'd only been here about eight months, with his wife and young son, when he found himself caught in the middle of the Watts Riot in Los Angeles.

In 1965, Jim McKay was a 19-year-old country boy who transplanted from a small swamp town in Louisiana to Los Angeles. He'd only been here about eight months, with his wife and young son, when he found himself caught in the middle of the Watts Riot in Los Angeles.

In 1965, Jim McKay was a 19-year-old country boy who transplanted from a small swamp town in Louisiana to Los Angeles. He'd only been here about eight months, with his wife and young son, when he found himself caught in the middle of the Watts Riot in Los Angeles.

Jim McKay stopped to think as he raced down the aisle of a steamy, pitch-black appliance store, others around him grabbing merchandise off shelves.

That passing second in the 144 hours of looting, burning and violence during the Watts riots of August 1965 became a defining moment for McKay.

He remembered who he was, what he wished to be.

He turned and left behind the new TV he never touched but had always wanted.

Two days later, McKay left Los Angeles for good, persuading a distant uncle to bring him and his family to Orange County.

A poor, young black man from segregated Louisiana, McKay arrived in South Los Angeles barely seven months before 50 square miles of the city exploded on Aug. 11, 1965.

The bright, airy condominium near peaceful Peters Canyon in Tustin that McKay, 60, shares with Lauralee, his wife of 23 years, couldn’t be further from the chaos of those six hot summer days 40 years ago.

Yet the images remain burned in McKay’s mind.

“I have a stigma from that riot. It traumatized me. I’m just not comfortable in Los Angeles; in South Central L.A. I get nervous. I just feel like something’s going to happen.”

The rioting shocked a 20-year-old McKay in much the same way it did the nation.

As he watched throngs of mostly young people sack the businesses where he lived, McKay’s thoughts echoed the questions raised by those who watched on TV: Why are they doing this? Don’t they know how good they have it here?

Only hours later, McKay, a self-described country bumpkin, found out how easy it was to get swept up in the looting.

“A lot of people didn’t have anything, and it was there for the taking. People just got caught up. There was the need.”

His hometown of Smithridge, La., a former sugar plantation, squatted so far down in the swamps it wasn’t on a map. No paved streets, no stoplights, no supermarket. Blacks lived and went to school on one side of the swamp, whites on the other.

McKay and 10 family members shared a tiny home with no indoor plumbing.

He dropped out of high school to toil in the cane fields and support the pregnant girlfriend he married.

“I was bound and determined to get out,” he said.

As a child, he’d tell his grandmother how someday he’d fly one of those planes he watched land in the swamps.

She’d bring him back to Earth with a sharp, “Boy, stop talkin’ that foolishness.”

His chance came when a distant cousin visited from Los Angeles and took him back. He left all but $6 from his $82 biweekly paycheck for his wife, who came later with their son.

In Los Angeles, he sensed opportunity. His first job at a meat-packing plant paid more than $100 a week, enough to rent an apartment in March 1965 on 52nd Street near Avalon Boulevard. His brother soon arrived.

The afternoon of Aug. 13, a Friday, McKay ended his first week on a new job hauling slabs of beef from semi-trucks.

For two days, he had seen the images of buildings on fire and people looting stores. It seemed so odd and far away.

“It was real strange to me because I had come from Louisiana where there was segregation. I didn’t see what the problem was. I had left the problem behind me.”

Besides, Watts was 50 blocks from his home. He ran into a friend who warned, “You better get home, the riots are down by your house.”

Near home, McKay turned a corner “and walked into hell.”

He saw a crowd beat a white woman in a ’51 Chevy.

He turned onto Avalon Boulevard. People lugged stereos, televisions and armloads of clothes from the stores. Others threw bricks and bottles at police.

On 52nd Street, a man chased by police ran toward him with a case of beer. The man tripped and as he fell, McKay looked into the barrel of an officer’s shotgun.

“I could see the bore of this gun. I remember thinking, `God, I came to California to get killed.’ ”

Police dragged the man off.

“I was in shock,” McKay says. “These were people I knew. I just could not figure out why they were doing it.”

It was crazy, but fascinating. He stood on a corner with neighbors, feeling safe, and watched young men loot a liquor store and an auto-parts store across the street.

“We said things like, ‘Look at that, that’s Mr. Such-and- Such’s store. They shouldn’t be doing that to his store because he helped people.’ “

That night turned out to be the worst of the rioting.

When the National Guard arrived and a soldier charged toward him, gun at the ready, McKay turned and ran home.

“The National Guard scared me to death. I was thinking the National Guard was going to start shooting up the place because this was war in the streets.”

Still, when a neighbor named Moe came by later that night and asked McKay and his brother if they wanted to ride around and look at the rioting, he climbed into Moe’s ’58 Oldsmobile.

They drove southeast toward Watts. Then Moe stopped in front of a clothing store, ran in and came out with an armful of clothes he threw in the back seat. The next stop: an appliance store.

“I just had an old black-and- white television,” McKay recalls. “Moe said, ‘Go get you a television.’ ”

That’s how McKay ended up facing his moment of truth, halfway toward the back of the store.

“I said, ‘What are you doing? What are you doing?’ I remember thinking, ‘What will my grandmother say if I get arrested for looting?’ ”

He ran out empty-handed, the longest run of his life.

After a scare when police pulled alongside their car, McKay demanded that Moe take them home. It was close to midnight by the time they had maneuvered the maze of cordoned-off streets.

McKay spent the rest of the night huddled on his living- room floor with his wife, their 10-month-old son, and his brother. Shots popped like firecrackers all night.

The next day, McKay got the number of an uncle he knew lived somewhere in California.

“I just wanted him to come get me. My uncle said, ‘Boy, I’m not coming up there.’ ”

His uncle came Sunday, under the calm of martial law.

McKay settled in Orange County, except for a few years spent in Moreno Valley. He’s a logistics manager for a company that does video and audio presentations.

Over the years, he’s been embarrassed by derogatory remarks, degraded at times in the work force. He and Lauralee, an interracial couple, got turned away when they first looked for apartments, until Lauralee went alone.

Even though he’s had to downsize his lifestyle because of layoffs after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, McKay got the life he wanted: He started a business and bought a home. He educated himself and his kids. He got his pilot’s license. He plays golf and tennis, and vacations in Jamaica.

What happened to him in August 1965 had a lot to do with where he ended up.

“I think I grew up that weekend. It helped motivate me to do what I’ve done. I did not want to be in that position to feel that I ought to be looting and burning. The riot did exactly what it should have done for me: showed me there’s got to be a better way to live. There’s got to be a better way to solve problems,” McKay said.

Theresa Walker is a Southern California native who has been a staff writer at The Orange County Register since 1992. She specializes in human interest stories and social issues, such as homelessness. She also covers nonprofits and philanthropy in Orange County. She loves telling stories about ordinary people who do the extraordinary in their communities.

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